I have a strange hobby. I absolutely love elevators. Does anybody have any suggestions for cool elevators to visit? My three areas of interest are:

1. Antique elevators with operators, such as those at the Fox Theatre in Detroit. These are my main obsession, particularly ones in buildings with over 8 stories. The holy grail would be a building like the late, lamented 25 story J.L. Hudson's department store in Detroit that had 96 elevators with operators. Wow!

2. Interior elevators that are so fast they take your breath away, such as those at the Prudential Tower in Boston or the John Hancock building in Chicago.

3. Fast glass elevators, such as those at the Marriott Marquis in Manhattan and Atlanta, or the St. Francis in San Francisco.

Surely the readers of this board know of some beauties...

Hi Alex-

In LA I would recommend the Bradbury Building- classic old, black iron elevator in center of landmark building. As you travel up or down, you can see every aspect of the building.

For fast, glass elevators- The Westin Bonaventure in downtown. A unique 5-cylindric tower hotel with glass elevators that travel b/w the towers.

In Toronto- the CN tower is extremely fast and goes VERY high!

Hope this helps-
Kevin

Re: the Westin Bonaventure - don't forget to see True Lies, which used the elevators in the movie (remember Arnold riding up on a horse?) The asst. Manager told me that they were mighty upset to see the Marriott (or was it some other chain? I forget) sign on top of the building on the fake set that was meant to be the roof of the hotel, after he just rode up the elevators in the Westin.

Other interesting elevators I have been in: in Japan, they seem to have very small elevators. One that many people here are probably familiar with is the elevator up to the old RCC and F (Fuji) lounges in Narita. What a small elevator, especially when there are 30 people trying to get downstairs to board a plane. No wonder the F concierge leads the F passengers down the nearby stairs.

Also, the main elevator in the Negresco hotel in Nice is quite amazing. It's got red plush upholstery on the back wall and has a chandelier. See http://www.lemson.com/lemson/picture...1381.JPG.html. Also see funky door to elevator at http://www.lemson.com/lemson/picture..._1379.JPG.html (it swings open by itself).

There's an old hotel in Chicago, the Blackstone (Michigan & Balbo?), that has cool elevators, but only for the movies that were filmed in them/at the hotel. "The Untouchables" (and it's infamous writing-on-the-wall-with-blood scene) was one of them, although I haven't watched the movie since I stayed at the hotel. I remember a plaque on the wall listing a half-dozen other films.

Elektrik

PS - Appropriate theme music for this hobby: Royal Crown Revue's "Elevator Operator." Good tune

The wonderful old cage elevator at the beautiful and historic Hotel Del Coronado near San Diego, California.

And still operated by hand.

Small world to find this topic on FT. Not because I am an elevator buff, but because in the process of building our commercial buildings we have to visit many elevator installations to see what the market is doing. This is my MO for getting a big chunk of flight miles.

The speed fix can be had at the Jinmao Building in Shanghai. They employ an 8m/second shuttle lift to their sky lobby on the 88th floor. A true nosebleeder.

The coolest thing I have checked out lately though is Schindler's Miconic 10 system. This is used in one of the elevator banks in Rockefeller Center in NYC (as well as several other places.) It basically allocates the lift that is most appropriate for the floors requested. You key in on a panel located near the building entrances the floor you wish to go to and it calculates your likely travel time from the keypad to the lift and then allocates the next available lift to that floor call. It will not serve more than a few other contiguous floors on that call but can be used for other floors on other calls. It reduces wait time to next to nothing. The discioncerting thing is getting in the lift and seeing no buttons at all. Some companies program into their IC cards the floor that person should go to and when you wave your card over the reader by the turnstyles on the ground floor, it lets you in and calls a lift for you. Obviously a few inconveniences can happen but it is a quantum leap in elevator efficiency. If you think Swiss chocolates and tick-tocks are great, this will be right up there.

The RCC lifts in NRT are oil lifts meaning their is an oil piston below the floor pushing the lift up. It is so slow as result of this and does not smell terrific either, kind of like an escalator in need of a servicing.

Mike

[This message has been edited by mjm (edited 11-29-2000).]

How about the elevator to the top of the Eiffel Tower?

I did some editorial work once on HBS project on innovation, one of whose examples was the Otis company and their development of an elevator that ran horizontally as well as vertically. Anyone ever been on such a thing? I used to dream of multidimension people movers when I was a kid and would dearly like to find out where I could actually see one.

I would say any glass elevator in a Hyattesque atrium hotel or free standing tower. There are just too many to mention. The most impressive one I have seen would be the Marriott Marquis's in Atlanta. Wow!!! I have been in the Westin Bonaventure a few times and would say it's not one of John Portman's finest. He's the architect of many of these types of hotels. The movie "Nick of Time" also had many scenes in the hotel. There was also an early Michael J. Fox movie which I think was named "the allnighter" or something like it that had the ending at the hotel. Violist, I believe that the new Detroit mid-field terminal will have Otis designed horizontal elevator people mover contraptions. I think the weirdest elevator I have been in was at the Dublin Hilton. It was extremely long and narrow and had a LCD monitor. Very strange.

violist, how about the "Inclinators" at the Luxor in Las Vegas. Half horizontal, half vertical. Well sort of. They run at an angle up the inside of the pyramid. Fun and very disorienting.

I've also always liked the glass elevators on cruise ships that have the multi-story centrum-style design.

On RCCL ships, for example, they rise some 10 stories through the center of the ship, a voice announcing each successive floor (considering the amount of food consumed onboard, what they should be saying is "Take the stairs, fatass" ). Then they go through the ceiling where you can see outdoors and the top pool deck before ascending into a lounge some 160 feet above water.

Elektrik

The PRADA store on Madison Ave in New York has only 4-5 floors, but its elevator is completely built of glass. When riding it, you can look out on four sides. Even the doors are glass. You can see all the mechanics, too (i.e. gears that cause the doors to open, etc.). Since I cannot afford the clothes, I go just to ride the elevator.

This topic brought back some memories ... when I was in high school my friends and I used to go elevator riding in San Francisco from time to time. Didn't know adults do it too! Among our favorites ... the Hyatt Embarcadero (one of those glass elevators inside an atrium), the TransAmerica pyramid building and the B of A Building (the last two for speed).

Among the coolest elevators are some old ones in Germany. I don't know if I can describe this too well without drawing it but there are several cars and they move continuously in a rectangular pattern so the elevator goes up, over, down, over, up, etc. (vertical and horizontal movement). It's fun to watch people on them because some people are kind of afraid of what the elevator does when it gets to the top - they get those, "Is this gonna flip me on my head" looks. You get on them while they're moving, so they're rather slow. I know of one outside Frankfurt, but I'll have to dig through some stuff to see if I can find a good address. Otherwise, perhaps someone from Germany will be able to help. The one I'm thinking of is in some sort of government or military building.

[This message has been edited by letiole (edited 11-30-2000).]

AppleFan: just the info I was looking for (although DTW weren't letters I cared to see).
PremEx: inclinators wouldn't be quite what I had in mind, as their movement is, what's the word, planar, essentially 2d. What the Otis Odyssey project focused on was (this quoted from Richard Leifer, et al., Radical Innovation, HBS Press, 2000) - "Over 50 years ago Frank Lloyd Wright designed a mile-high building ... [that] could not be constructed until the problem of moving the people was solved. A single elevator shaft was not a solution due to the weight of the cable. Multiple shafts consumed too much available 'real estate' of the building. ... Why not allow the elevator cab to detach from the shaft and move horizontally to a second shaft? ... ... Since the innovation required that elevator cars disembark from the vertical shaft, any single car's journey could be customized to navigate through a building or series of buildings and tunnels. ..." So what we're talking about is an elevator that has a three-dimensional route. Kind of interesting, to me at least.

Violist,
Below is the link to the newswire story on the future DTW terminal.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/001025/mi_det_met.html